Life sentence for 2005 double murder

A Chicago man was sentenced to life in prison today in a 2005 double murder at a Southwest Side convenience store that police solved in part because of lottery tickets he purchased moments before the killings.
Timothy Fountain, 43, was convicted last October of first-degree murder and armed robbery in the 2005 shooting deaths of Graciela Rodriguez, 37, and Nicholas Guerrero, 75, inside Maggy’s Food Store in the 4400 block of South California Avenue.
Judge Charles Burns sentenced Fountain to life without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 30 years for the armed robbery count.
Prosecutors said Fountain, a convicted robber, went into the store and ordered two Pick-Four lottery tickets from Rodriguez, a clerk, before announcing a robbery, grabbing cash from the register and forcing her at gunpoint to a back room, where he shot her in the head. On his way out of the store, Fountain shot and killed Guerrero, a grandfather of 15 who lived next door and visited the store every day to chat with Rodriguez.
Surveillance footage of the robbery was too grainy to positively identify the killer, and a composite sketch drawn from a teenage witness who saw the gunman outside the store minutes before the robbery did not yield any leads.
A few weeks later, with the case going cold, a detective on a hunch entered one of the lottery ticket numbers – 5157 – into a police database of convicted robbers.
Fountain’s name popped up because he had used the address of 5157 S. Union Ave. -- his mother’s house -- when he was arrested in the late 1990s. Detectives then showed a photo array to the witness who had seen the gunman, and he identified Fountain.
In the ensuing investigation, DNA found under Guerrero’s fingernails was matched to Fountain, indicating the two had struggled before Guerrero was shot